Pop Culture

Jun 23, 2009, 06:02AM

The Science of Staring

The stares of strangers endured
by Connie Culp, recent face transplant recipient, might have little to do with
cruelty or lack of empathy. These responses are likely a result of neurologic,
biologic and evolutionary factors.Prior to her operation, the center
of Culp’s face was blank skin traversed by a single raw scar where she once had
a nose, upper lip and cheeks. The disfigurement made her the target of
something perhaps even less fixable: millions of years of evolutionary uncouth.
When she went out in public, people gaped at her. After her operation, her face
still looks unusual and the stares continue.“We stare. Even if you don’t
want to, even if your better judgment tells you ‘I need to be nice to this
person. They’ve obviously suffered a tragedy,’ there’s something so alien and
uncomfortable — it just doesn’t look like us,” said facial expression expert
Erika Rosenberg, who focuses on evolution at UC Davis’ Center for the Mind and
Brain. “It goes back to a very primal thing.”To ensure the long-term survival
of our species, we’re genetically predisposed to be attracted to symmetrical
faces. The idea is that normal, healthy development free of disfiguring
diseases or genetic mutations produces a symmetrical face. We unconsciously see
symmetry as a marker of genetic quality. Our reaction to a face that is
disfigured, however, also has links with short-term survival.Humans are highly social
animals. Rather than remaining among our family or herd from birth to death, we
venture out. We spend our days mixing with great numbers of unfamiliar members
of our species.To do so safely, scientists
believe we have evolved a rough screening process. When someone unfamiliar
approaches you in the aisle of a grocery store, a glance at his face and its
expression helps your brain to sort that person into one of two broad
categories: safe or potentially unsafe. The amygdala (the brain area associated
with judgment) depends upon the emotion conveyed by the person’s facial
features to make that crucial call. Is he happy? Angry? Irritated?To decide, your eyes sweep over
the person’s face, retrieving only parts, mainly just his nose and eyes. Your
brain will then try to assemble those pieces into a configuration that you know
something about.When the pieces you supply match
nothing in the gallery of known facial expressions, when you encounter a person
whose nose, mouth or eyes are distorted in a way you have never encountered
before, you instinctively lock on. Your gaze remains riveted, and your brain
stays tuned for further information.“When a face is distorted, we
have no pattern to match that,” Rosenberg said. “All primates show this
[staring] at something very different, something they have not evolved to see.
They need to investigate further. ‘Are they one of us or not?’ In other
species, when an animal looks very different, they get rejected.”And so, we stare. (An averted
gaze is triggered in some people. This too can be overridden only with great
difficulty.)It doesn’t take much of a
facial anomaly to trigger a transfixed response; a normal human face upside
down will do it. Or one that is simply unmoving.In her work with Paul Ekman,
who pioneered the widely accepted theory that human emotion conveyed via facial
expressions is biological in origin, Rosenberg studied a group of people with a
condition that prevents their facial muscles from moving.“They talk about how difficult
it is to interact with people because people can’t handle looking at a face
that doesn’t move,” Rosenberg said.However, a surgery that allows
them to lift their tongue has a “transformative effect on their lives,” noted
Rosenberg. “Just being able to lift the tongue and move their faces enough to
create a little smile. It shows you how profoundly important it is to have a
face that works.”It could be that the faces don’t
match emotions we are familiar with, or it could be they don’t look like we
expect humans to look, says Rosenberg. “Either way, there’s something very
fundamental about having a normal working face that we need in our society.”